“No half measures, Camile.” She tracked her weapon over the wing. “If they are strong enough, they will survive.”
It wasn’t too tall of an expectation. Dragons were hearty and House Rok was the strongest of them all. If any emerged, Leona would see them to whatever business they had on Loom personally.
Camile did the same with her gun. Leona had to hold in laughter at the sight. Her companion looked ridiculous with a weapon in hand. Though the same could be said of her. It had been Sybil and her pack that ran with guns. Leona and her acolytes always preferred the Dragons’ traditional means of destruction: claws.
Still, when on Loom she would fight as the Fenthri did if it served her means. The thinking was a very Xin approach. But to kill a Xin, she conceded, one needed to think like a Xin. Terrifying as that might be.
Leona leveled her weapon and gripped the trigger. The Revos had given them only one canister each, insisting they wouldn’t need more. When Leona pushed back, delicately and not so delicately, they still did not come up with more canisters, saying that the chemicals and powders required simply weren’t kept in stock.
Leona forced her magic into the long gun. The second she did, runes lit up along the handle and barrel. Once activated, she had no choice but to keep feeding it. They leeched magic from her hungrily, siphoning it out through both hands. The runes glowed in the darkness so brightly they drew their shapes with beams of light in the hazy night air around her. The last rune on the barrel sparked, joining the rest.
Leona wasted no time and pulled the trigger.
A bolt of magic shot forward in a straight line and missed the wing by a small margin. Leona screamed in annoyance. She was sure it was her sister’s heart that lingered somewhere in the depths of her magic that cackled hellishly, scolding her for all the times she’d skipped shooting practice.
The magic ray continued forward, striking the ground far below. In a reverse chain reaction, the beam exploded backward, fanning out in all directions. The edge of the magic clipped the wing she had been aiming for, which had already moved well ahead, and disintegrated the edge of it on contact. At least she’d taken out some of the gold helping keep the airship aloft.
Leona threw away the weapon and grabbed the levers of her craft with a heavy sigh. The Revos hadn’t been lying to her. Despite all her boasting and arrogance, it had taken a lot out of her to make such a shot. Bruises dotted her skin where blood vessels had broken. She focused on nothing more than keeping her glider aloft, letting her magic slowly replenish through the fatigue.
Her attention was pulled left as another shot exploded from across the airship. Camile’s magic burned a slightly different color from Leona’s, but it was just as large. Even better, it hit its mark. Leona howled with bloodthirsty joy at the sight of the beam of magic cutting through the wing of the airship.
Magic glittered across its surface, hungry for sustenance. It consumed the wing whole, and the side of the airship when the beam expanded. Even better, the shockwave clipped the delicate balloon helping hold the ship aloft. It expelled air with a mighty wheeze and the vessel lurched through the air, swaying and dropping precipitously with only one wing to support its flight.
Leona looked at the triumphant smile Camile wore and rolled her eyes. “Don’t you start bragging.”
“The one thing Sybil was good for!” Camile called back.
“You practiced shooting with Sybil?”
“Someone under you needed to know a little about Loom’s weaponry. I thought it would pay off eventually.” Camile winked.
Pay off it did. Leona vowed that when they returned to Nova, she would see Camile rewarded handsomely by the Dono. She would figure out later what that reward would look like. For now, she would remain focused on what would get her back to Nova: killing Cvareh.
Men and women ran around the airship, shouting and screaming. Just a tiny little act and their peaceful night was thrown into delicious madness. Leona rounded the airship, watching them sprint to the back balconies in confusion. She caught glimpses of crowded hallways and utter chaos within.
But she didn’t see Cvareh or the Wraith.
She would remain on her glider until she had visual confirmation of them. And, if she must, she would hand-pick them from the airship’s rubble. On the lowest balcony in the back, a crowd was beginning to amass. They tripped and stumbled over the pitching of the airship as it continued to fall through the sky. Small gliders were being loaded frantically. Dragons stepped forward to man each of them, their magic more certain to provide sustainable lift or flight than any Chimera’s.
Leona made an involuntary gagging motion at the sight of it. Dragons helping Fenthri. It was disgusting. She wanted her kin aboard those tiny fliers, certainly. But Fenthri? Let them all die; there were far too many of them anyway.